The video I’ve linked at the bottom of this blog shares a deeper-learning program that successfully operates at a US school. The overall, nutshell message is that if we believe in the capacity of students to achieve greatness they will be great. One way to push students' capacity for learning is through challenge and struggle. (I personally don’t agree with the word choice of “struggle” because to me that pushes so far beyond the comfort zone it becomes too hard to succeed; however, “challenge” I agree with). Students can be challenged with content material that requires deep levels of focus, contemplation, involvement, and the capacity to sit with ambiguity. They can also be challenged by processes such as group dialogue, debate, and creative means to demonstrate their learning that goes beyond simple regurgitation of facts and builds courage and confidence. Challenge begins to extend to all facets of life as students begin to grow meta-cognitively and challenge themselves. For instance, one student in the video shared his story of perseverance as it applied to his running; he affirmed the connection between his scholarly perseverance and his physical training, pointing to the underlying mindset, or belief, that he could go further in any endeavour to which he was engaged. I, too, have experience with endurance growing into a mindset that thinks anything is possible. Thus, in general, I agree that challenges help people grow as long as they aren’t consistently scaffolding for failure. I think it is important to remember that every individual will respond to various challenges differently and in order to scaffold for success these differences must be taken into account. A teacher who demands, for instance, that an extreme introvert stand in front of the class to lead a lesson on a topic they only just started, would be scaffolding for failure. This may seem like an obvious point, but I have witnessed a similar scenario. My point is that when presenting challenges, teachers must observe closely and know their students well in order to support them to be successful. Respectful relationships are therefore crucial. There are many practical ways that traditional systems can include a challenge program. Debates, for instance, that are set up in a way that each student must argue in rotation for both sides of the debate in order to see both perspectives deeply. Other forms of deep learning that challenge the students on many levels include cross-curricular projects that culminate in a project fair for presentation to another classroom or school, collaborative art projects that involve a contribution to the community such as a mural, dialogues seminar style where each student is responsible for tabling a point of interest and a question, group chats that involve the sharing of both personal information/feelings and academic goals/challenges etc (referred to as “crew structure” in video). Activities that encourage critical thinking such as student-lead experiments, and activities that provoke thinking about thinking such as reflective journals & guided meditation are both important to include as often as possible. I realize that integrating the concept of challenge for deeper learning into my own practice is equally as important as facilitating it in students. This requires similar if not the same techniques; through community involvement, collaborative projects that are creative, fun and purposeful and self reflective practices such as meditation I am able to grow my capacity for comfort with ambiguity, my courage, my confidence, my empathy and my ability to support others to do the same.
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AuthorNatalie Nickerson; that's me. Archives
March 2016
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